WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.680 2001 was a busy year, Apple was poppin' off Napster and Sega, meanwhile threw in their 00:00:06.680 --> 00:00:12.840 respective towels, we got three new game consoles, one from a brand new challenger, scientists 00:00:12.840 --> 00:00:18.480 found this little guy, and America had her worst day ever. 00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:23.120 And for those of us who still remember all of that, Windows XP holds a special place 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:26.840 in our hearts. But was it really that good? 00:00:26.840 --> 00:00:31.020 Or was it just better than the Millennium Edition and Vista Dumpster Fires that Book 00:00:31.020 --> 00:00:37.200 ended in? To find out, we gathered some of our young and young at heart friends to see if they 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:42.160 could navigate Microsoft's most iconic Windows ever. 00:00:42.160 --> 00:00:45.520 There's lots more where that came from, but before we get to it, there's one more thing 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:53.600 that came out in 2001. This segue, well not this one exactly, one like it, whoa does this thing even work? 00:00:53.600 --> 00:00:58.820 We're still gonna get to our sponsor though. Windows XP was chock full of important milestones. 00:00:58.820 --> 00:01:03.760 It was the first consumer version of Windows to be based on the more stable NT kernel. 00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:09.160 It was the first to require Microsoft product activation online, and it was the first major 00:01:09.160 --> 00:01:13.760 overhaul of the start menu since it was introduced back in Windows 95. 00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:19.400 It was also the first Windows to use graphical effects like alpha compositing and drop shadows 00:01:19.400 --> 00:01:25.000 to pretty up the interface, and it introduced clear type for better readability on LCD 00:01:25.800 --> 00:01:30.000 displays, which were just starting to approach affordability for the home user. 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.600 There were also big changes to the control panel, Windows Explorer, networks and internet 00:01:34.600 --> 00:01:40.480 connectivity, multi-language support and multimedia tools, many of which have changed a fair bit 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:46.160 since then. So let's see if our test subjects are able to navigate our challenges. 00:01:46.160 --> 00:01:51.080 I'm Katie and I'm 18 years old. I am McIntyre and I am 17 years old. 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:56.920 Ah hi, I'm Elijah, junior writer here. I am 26 years old and I have actually never used Windows XP. 00:01:56.920 --> 00:02:02.160 I've never even used Windows 7. Whoa, Windows XP is running on this display. 00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:05.600 Man, I haven't used this since like 2001. 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:11.120 I remember it was my favorite operating system all the way until probably Windows 10. 00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:15.600 You know, the funny thing is it actually looks really alike. Like Windows hasn't actually changed all that much. 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:19.680 Wow, the local area connection with the little two monitors or whatever. 00:02:19.680 --> 00:02:22.720 Oh my God, I forgot all about this stuff. Oh my God. 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:25.840 Control panel? The good one? Oh, I can't search anymore. 00:02:25.840 --> 00:02:28.840 No. I have to actually hit the search button. I want you to set up the screen saver. 00:02:28.840 --> 00:02:31.840 What is it? Can I search for it? Let's try. 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:34.840 What was it called again? Holy pictures. Oh gosh, this is bad. 00:02:34.840 --> 00:02:37.840 Oh my. Oh my gosh, it's right there. Oh, that one for sure. 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:40.840 Oh my God, I forgot about all the screen savers. Oh, where's the like pipes? 3D pipes. 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:43.840 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. 00:02:43.840 --> 00:02:46.840 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:49.840 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:52.960 Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. 00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:55.960 3D pipes. Yeah. Oh my gosh. 00:02:55.960 --> 00:02:58.960 Oh my gosh. There's like all the pipes. Yeah. 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:02.860 Alright, well, properties, obviously. Desktop, screensaver. Wait, does this have the pipes? Hell, yeah. 00:03:02.860 --> 00:03:07.860 There you go. It has been applied. I think it's the first person to go to properties to do that. 00:03:07.860 --> 00:03:10.860 Uh oh. Where did everyone else go? Oh, it was the control panel. 00:03:10.860 --> 00:03:13.860 The dog. I forgot about the dog. I remember Merlin. 00:03:13.860 --> 00:03:17.780 Yeah, Merlin was dope. Oh, the dog! 00:03:17.780 --> 00:03:21.860 I forgot about the dog! I remember Merlin. Yeah, Merlin was dope. 00:03:21.860 --> 00:03:25.900 Who else, Courtney, Earl. I don't remember Courtney or Earl. 00:03:25.900 --> 00:03:30.540 I mostly just remember Merlin and Rover. 100% using Merlin. 00:03:30.540 --> 00:03:34.140 Switch. Why didn't he switch? Oh, he's going away. And then he comes in! 00:03:34.140 --> 00:03:39.420 What an animation. Oh my God. Probably my favorite thing that I used to do in XP 00:03:39.420 --> 00:03:43.940 was turn everything off so that I could get higher FPS in half-life 00:03:43.980 --> 00:03:45.260 and Counter-Strike. 00:03:49.060 --> 00:03:52.260 I took it sweet time. All right, my CD's in. 00:03:52.260 --> 00:03:57.940 Now we need to open it. Does this thing even open? I don't even think I've ever even touched one of these things. 00:03:57.940 --> 00:04:01.740 I'm trying not to break it. I have no clue. 00:04:01.740 --> 00:04:05.220 Okay, now I've just gotten a bunch of options of different audio. 00:04:05.220 --> 00:04:08.500 I can play the audio, copy it, 00:04:09.500 --> 00:04:14.380 play it from different, I think, apps, I think. I don't know how to do it. 00:04:14.380 --> 00:04:19.300 No, there's no copy. This is enable and disable selected tracks. 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:21.100 Is there anything... Proper? 00:04:23.100 --> 00:04:26.980 Um... Oh yeah, copy music is there. Oh, there, okay. 00:04:26.980 --> 00:04:30.180 Oh, this'll be easy. I want track one 00:04:31.980 --> 00:04:35.980 and I want track six and I want track nine. 00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:37.860 Let's do one and 24. 00:04:39.020 --> 00:04:41.860 Wait, now the 24 is gone. Okay, this makes no sense. 00:04:42.500 --> 00:04:46.060 Okay, now they're all gone. Now they're all unchecked. What? 00:04:46.060 --> 00:04:50.660 Oh, I can hear it. It's, oh, the high pitch is actually really annoying. 00:04:50.660 --> 00:04:54.620 It's doing some sort of coil wine of some sort. Well, it sounds like coil wine. 00:04:54.620 --> 00:04:58.020 I don't know if it's actually coil wine, but like, it's that type of sound. 00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:01.860 Is it done? Holy crap, this takes forever. 00:05:01.860 --> 00:05:06.460 I could probably Google this CD faster on YouTube. 00:05:06.460 --> 00:05:10.380 Go to a youtube.mp3ripper. Don't do that, by the way. 00:05:10.380 --> 00:05:13.700 And then rip it faster than this. This is crazy. 00:05:13.700 --> 00:05:16.780 Hey, I got my three songs. All right, good work. 00:05:16.780 --> 00:05:19.940 Now, I want you to make an audio CD with those tracks. 00:05:19.940 --> 00:05:26.940 Insert blank C, okay. Well, conveniently, there's a blank CD right here. 00:05:28.940 --> 00:05:32.460 It's a CD. Do they? 00:05:32.460 --> 00:05:36.660 Oh. Okay, now it's copying to the CD. Nice. 00:05:36.660 --> 00:05:40.460 First one's done. This is mine. 00:05:40.460 --> 00:05:44.100 There we go. This is 1516. 00:05:44.100 --> 00:05:46.780 Okay. So, oh yeah. 00:05:47.780 --> 00:05:50.020 Sweet. I got my own CD now. 00:05:53.380 --> 00:05:57.620 No, it's not click and drag. Oh, copy. Insert blank CD. 00:05:57.620 --> 00:05:58.460 I did. 00:06:03.460 --> 00:06:09.540 Huh? They look the exact fucking same. What do you mean look closer at the drives? 00:06:09.540 --> 00:06:16.340 One says LG. One says DVD. Is it because this one says Secure Disc? 00:06:16.340 --> 00:06:20.420 Or a Supermulti? Yeah, the Supermulti's what you're asking. 00:06:20.420 --> 00:06:23.580 Okay, copy. Holy. 00:06:23.580 --> 00:06:28.380 This is the past version. That's crazy to me. Dude, this would drive me, 00:06:28.380 --> 00:06:32.380 like if my Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer was acting this slow, 00:06:32.380 --> 00:06:36.980 I would immediately be reinstalling. I'd be like, something's wrong. I forgot how long you'd put a CD in 00:06:36.980 --> 00:06:41.740 and you'd like rip it and then you'd walk away for a while because it actually takes some time. 00:06:41.740 --> 00:06:45.780 What a process. We just don't even do this anymore. Wow, I get to open it. 00:06:45.780 --> 00:06:48.340 I get the privilege. Sheesh. 00:06:49.580 --> 00:06:50.420 Amazing. 00:06:53.780 --> 00:06:57.540 Smells like 2000, baby. Which one's what? 00:06:57.540 --> 00:07:00.540 It should say all of them. Select the programs you want to install. 00:07:00.540 --> 00:07:04.660 Oh, I see it. Okay, okay. 00:07:04.660 --> 00:07:08.580 Oh, there it goes. It's installing. Insert Microsoft Suite Disk 2 00:07:08.580 --> 00:07:11.860 and then why does it ask me to do Disk 2? 00:07:11.860 --> 00:07:15.620 Yeah, back in the day, and this is after floppies too 00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:19.060 because you used to have to do this with floppies as well where you'd get like a stack of floppies 00:07:19.060 --> 00:07:22.140 and then you'd install them disk by disk. And then CDs came out 00:07:22.140 --> 00:07:27.500 and they could hold a lot more information and that was great, but you still had to do a lot of things one by one. 00:07:27.500 --> 00:07:32.820 I remember installing Diablo 2 and you could skip part of the install 00:07:32.820 --> 00:07:36.740 but you wouldn't get the cinematics because they were all on like Disk 3 or whatever. 00:07:36.740 --> 00:07:40.940 All right, let's see if this just auto launches. It did set up. Wow. 00:07:40.940 --> 00:07:46.500 This may take several minutes. That's very true. It would take even longer if it was on a hard drive, 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:48.340 which everyone had back then. 00:07:53.300 --> 00:07:56.380 All programs. Holy crap. This is the worst organization 00:07:56.380 --> 00:07:57.940 I've ever seen in my entire life. 00:08:01.180 --> 00:08:05.300 Could not find streets and trips on this machine. Oh, disk on this machine. 00:08:05.300 --> 00:08:09.820 Oh, do I need to? Oh, okay. 00:08:09.820 --> 00:08:13.780 What the hell is the point of installing the program if I have to reinsert the disk anyways? 00:08:14.820 --> 00:08:16.940 So it'll install what it needs to run. 00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:21.100 The problem with that is the one with CDs. Oh. 00:08:22.340 --> 00:08:26.100 Is that just because like people didn't have hard drives like big enough back then? 00:08:26.100 --> 00:08:29.420 Probably? In a lot of cases, yeah. Okay. 00:08:29.420 --> 00:08:33.380 We did it. Wait, how do I move? Oh God, I just, 00:08:34.820 --> 00:08:37.940 Oh, I can search. Linus. Nope, that wouldn't work. 00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:38.780 Cause it's, 00:08:40.980 --> 00:08:44.020 What's our address? Right here would be the office. 00:08:47.140 --> 00:08:50.860 Yeah, it does not look like this. I found the office. Let's go. 00:08:50.860 --> 00:08:54.660 All right. Now let's Doc's Linus. His exact address is no. 00:08:54.660 --> 00:09:00.660 I want to go cheatcc.com, cheat code central. Because back then you could actually cheat NVIDIA games 00:09:00.660 --> 00:09:04.900 without like hacking. Wow, member of the week, this guy. I don't know who he is, but sure. 00:09:04.900 --> 00:09:10.340 Oh my God. Gamecube free CCC email, DVD, PlayStation, codes. 00:09:10.340 --> 00:09:14.620 You go to codes and you'd find codes and you'd enter them in. You'd have to search by, oh my God, you'd search. 00:09:14.620 --> 00:09:17.700 You'd be like, I want to play, I want the Crash Bandicoot cheat codes 00:09:17.700 --> 00:09:20.940 and then you'd scroll down. Oh yeah, cool borders four. 00:09:20.940 --> 00:09:25.220 Man, this sucks. Is this because we're using web archive 00:09:25.220 --> 00:09:28.500 or is this how long it would take to load a website back then? 00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:33.620 A little call of B, a little call of B. Okay. There's an Athlon XP-1800. 00:09:33.620 --> 00:09:37.380 Is that, oh, and a motherboard. So that's a combo. 00:09:37.380 --> 00:09:40.980 160 CAD for a motherboard CPU combo. 00:09:40.980 --> 00:09:44.000 That's pretty good. A broadband router. 00:09:46.740 --> 00:09:50.740 60 gig hard drive, 140 Canadian dollars. 00:09:53.180 --> 00:09:56.220 Do you want to not be able to install the newest Call of Duty? 00:09:56.220 --> 00:09:58.580 Here's $140. Have a good day. 00:09:59.980 --> 00:10:03.700 That's crazy. Did you play a lot of pinball? Nope. 00:10:03.700 --> 00:10:07.060 Played once in an arcade machine in a bowling alley, but that's about it. 00:10:08.100 --> 00:10:11.860 This was like the hot new game machine out with this version of Windows. 00:10:11.860 --> 00:10:15.380 Yeah, that's pretty sad. I was ready. Yeah. 00:10:15.380 --> 00:10:18.820 I got a new computer. You want to play pinball with me? Here we go. 00:10:18.820 --> 00:10:20.780 He's right here. Or is this a girl? 00:10:22.540 --> 00:10:25.220 Why'd you hit her? No, I didn't hit her. 00:10:28.260 --> 00:10:32.260 I'm right where the arrow, oh yeah, now I hit her. My bad. 00:10:32.260 --> 00:10:35.540 Yo, GT83, no, Max Payne. I love Max Payne. 00:10:35.540 --> 00:10:39.500 Yo, I want, what's this monitor? Is it 1920? Hell yeah. 00:10:39.500 --> 00:10:41.780 I want anti-aliasing off, yeah. 00:10:43.100 --> 00:10:47.180 High settings, everything's on high. Let's see how this game runs, baby. 00:10:47.180 --> 00:10:50.700 Oh, dude, this is like 30, 60. 00:10:50.700 --> 00:10:54.820 Oh God, my frame's dropped. What? Oh God, there's another one. 00:10:54.820 --> 00:10:57.140 So. Oh. 00:10:59.860 --> 00:11:05.780 Dude, this game is sick, man. It makes me respect where we're at now 00:11:05.780 --> 00:11:09.100 for operating systems, I think. Like even just the simple things, 00:11:09.100 --> 00:11:14.020 like hitting Windows in search or the load times for things. 00:11:14.020 --> 00:11:17.500 You know, as much as I reminisce 00:11:17.500 --> 00:11:20.500 and like to think I miss XP, 00:11:20.500 --> 00:11:24.140 it's really easy to just fly through Windows 11. There's a lot of like sub menus 00:11:24.140 --> 00:11:29.300 that I originally was like, oh, why'd they get rid of all these? But once you get used to it, it's so much faster. 00:11:29.300 --> 00:11:33.140 Looking back then, Windows XP really was a huge step 00:11:33.140 --> 00:11:37.900 in the path toward modern Windows. 95 and 98 deserve some credit. 00:11:37.900 --> 00:11:41.380 They had vastly more usable interfaces than what came before them, 00:11:41.380 --> 00:11:45.900 but they did nothing to solve the issues that were inherent with the DOS-based reality 00:11:45.900 --> 00:11:49.820 that was behind the curtains. 2000 addressed a lot of the stability 00:11:49.820 --> 00:11:53.260 and security concerns thanks to its business grade 00:11:53.260 --> 00:11:57.460 NT kernel, but it was only intended for business users 00:11:57.460 --> 00:12:02.100 and was priced to match. So it fell to XP to bring those benefits 00:12:02.100 --> 00:12:05.860 to the average user. And aside from just stability, 00:12:05.860 --> 00:12:09.620 there are glimpses of the future all over Windows XP. 00:12:09.620 --> 00:12:14.100 The start menu moved away from the monolithic all programs list 00:12:14.100 --> 00:12:17.700 in favor of highlighting your most used app. It had improved search, 00:12:17.700 --> 00:12:23.460 meaning you didn't have to go digging for things quite so often. And it had improved networking and internet features 00:12:23.460 --> 00:12:27.400 that were central to ushering in the always connected world we live in now, 00:12:27.400 --> 00:12:30.580 where most of what we do on a computer is in a web browser, 00:12:30.580 --> 00:12:34.220 say with Wikipedia, rather than load it 00:12:34.220 --> 00:12:38.460 onto our machine with a disk like Microsoft and Karta. 00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:42.220 Speaking of mind blowing things, this will probably blow our younger viewers' minds, 00:12:42.220 --> 00:12:45.260 but thumbnails, slideshows, and the task pane, 00:12:45.260 --> 00:12:50.220 those didn't exist before Windows XP. And while Auto Run wasn't new, 00:12:50.260 --> 00:12:54.140 there was finally enough functionality in the operating system and bundled apps 00:12:54.140 --> 00:12:57.540 for it to be genuinely useful, as we saw in our music ripping 00:12:57.540 --> 00:13:02.220 and our disk burning challenges. So XP, you know what? 00:13:02.220 --> 00:13:06.860 You stood up to the test of time, even if your usability could have been a little better. 00:13:06.860 --> 00:13:10.260 Just like this segue could have been a little better to our sponsor. 00:13:10.260 --> 00:13:16.700 If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go check out the one where we had young people try Windows 95. 00:13:16.700 --> 00:13:18.220 They struggled even more.